How to Watch a Bird

by Steve Braunias

  I got my 97 birds, ticked off on Bill’s list, and returned with a bird feeder and a sack of nuts bought at the Cley reserve. Thanks to Bill, I was able to identify the birds that flocked around the feeder I stuck on the end of a metal pole outside my Barton Close house – blue tit, coal tit, great tit. It was good to observe them as the autumn days faded, and winter banged on England’s door. Leaves fell from the trees, it got dark before four in the afternoon; I dozed in the warm, vast, silent university library while reading an original copy of Buller’s book of New Zealand birds, dedicated to his sons Walter Leonard and Arthur Percival. Cambridge was such a loveliness, with its meadows and bicycles, its brilliant talk and its peculiar images, such as the topiary emperor penguin designed by Antarctic explorer Sir Vivian Fuchs in the grounds of Wolfson College.

  Over breakfast, lunch and supper in the dining hall, I would try to keep up with the minds of fellow diners such as the Ibsen scholar from Norway, the giddy Swiss political scientist, and the Trinidadian engineer who claimed he was studying the vibrations made by musicians who played the steel drum. Much of the rest of the time, I plodded away writing a book, and tried to hide from the shame I felt after reading British ornithologist James Fisher’s view on modern authors of bird books: ‘Those who have tried it lately, under the misapprehension that nature writing still needs a Tone of Voice, or Slant of Pen, or (worst of all) a ponderous facetiousness, have not known what they were writing about, really.’

  It was a strange three months. The food was good, the talk was amazing, the tits were pleasant on the eye. But I wanted to be home, where Emily slept while on the other, daylight side of the world I observed great tits, where the spare room waited for Minka. The closest I got to New Zealand was an afternoon in the basement of the Museum of Zoology, where I looked at Cambridge’s collection of huia, stuffed and lying head to tail inside a sealed glass case. Just about the closest I got to England was the night in the Ffolkes Arms Hotel (‘acquired by the Ffolkes family in 1678’), where I dined with Bill. The news in that day’s paper was about Tony Blair finally declaring he would stand down as prime minister.

  ‘Will you miss Blair?’ I asked Bill. ‘No,’ he said. And then he talked about his own politics, about what had happened to England. He said he belonged to the British National Party. ‘That’s different from the National Front, obviously, I guess,’ I said. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘They do their stuff in the streets. We keep it dignified.’ He explained that its aim was to halt the wave of immigrants to England, which had lost its national identity, where hardly anyone at his kids’ school spoke English, where hardly anyone observed or even knew of England’s national day, St George’s Day, where foreign cultures had become dominant, pervasive, out of control.

  Ah, I thought. Here I am in the Ffolkes Arms Hotel in Norfolk with a xenophobic birder. What to make of him after he vented such a horrible little rage? He had looked so shifty when he gave that speech. But late the next day, on our way back to Cambridge, I put all my feelings of revulsion aside: he parked on a country lane, and said that perhaps, if we waited a few minutes, I might see something special. We hung around for about ten minutes. We trained our bins on the sky. And then, with a deep call to the east, something appeared – cranes. We saw these long, giant birds in flight, heads and legs outstretched, then land right in front of us, in a row, eleven of them, great big lanky birds, a thrilling arrival just before dusk, a few miles around the corner from a village that really was called Horsey. It was the closest I ever felt to England.

  Red-billed Gulls, Mokohinau

  Summer

  THE SUMMER OF 2007 – all that broad daylight making New Zealand once again the land of the long white page – was five royal spoonbills in Island Bay, a marsh sandpiper in Little Waihi, a wandering tatler among 35 turnstones near the seal colony in Kaikoura, a Baird’s sandpiper at Lake Ellesmere, a Mongolian dotterel on Cow Island, a kookaburra on telegraph wires near Waiwera, a kaka mobbed by three tui in Albany, a sharp-tailed sandpiper on the Ashley river bed, a glossy ibis in Blenheim, a Hudsonian godwit at Port Waikato, and the channel-billed cuckoo was sighted on Motiti Island off Mount Maunganui, then on telegraph wires near the roundabout at Bethlehem, and later feeding on a plum tree in Tauranga.

  It was the season of the Australian vagrant flittering around on our shores. Birders and twitchers were out in force too, courtesy of Wrybill Tours, Driftwood Eco-Tours, Kiwi Wildlife Tours, Manu Tours and other guides, on board ocean pelagic tours, stalking the bush, inspecting wader counts, finding whatever they could find. Tourist numbers included nine Taiwanese birders, trooping along the hot January sands of Pakiri beach, weighed down with bins and scopes and cameras, and being led by a Kiwi Wildlife birding guide to a single pair of breeding fairy terns. A former English twitcher, now living in the Far North, notched his life list of New Zealand birds up to 187, and asked: ‘Who keeps a world year list?’ He had scored an amazing 920 birds in 2006.

  Brent Stephenson of Wrybill Tours got his New Zealand record of 206 birds. It included positive ID of that bird given up for dead, the New Zealand storm petrel, in the Hauraki Gulf, a pectoral sandpiper at Miranda, a taiko in the Chatham Islands, a glossy ibis at Travis Wetland in Christchurch, a nankeen kestrel in the Far North, and bird number 193 was a rock wren in the snow – in December! – at the Homer Tunnel. It got him thinking about what would really be possible for a proper Big Year twitch in New Zealand, which is to say the remorseless pursuit of birds every day for 365 days, no expenses spared, throwing up in the sea one day and circling a sewage pond the next; he estimated a grand total of 255 birds.

  For the less ambitious that summer, there were pleasures in locating a long-tailed cuckoo near Okere Falls, 2500 godwits at Karaka, and a weka swimming in Southland. There were special excitements. An Australian wood duck turned up at the Hokitika sewage ponds, although it eluded a party of nine British twitchers, and numerous attempts were made to confirm reports of a Japanese snipe at Whangamarino Wetland. Despite no accepted records of it appearing in New Zealand, there were rumours of a brown falcon chasing sparrows in the Far North; it was neither confirmed or denied that a stray leopard seal washed up in Fiordland, and scoffed five crested penguins; and there was some mystery about why SIPOs attacked over 100 fresh hay bales in a paddock in Southland. Other tales of common assault included pukekos killing two red-billed gull chicks at Sulphur Point in Rotorua; they were fed to juvenile pukekos, who ate the head and ignored the rest.

  This was New Zealand measured by birds, the harvests of summer bringing birds to its shores and its forests, its river beds and its sewage ponds, its telegraph wires and its suburban backyards. Godwits had returned from Siberia to eat up large; wrybill moved up from the South Island to feed on Auckland harbours. When I returned from England, the thing that immediately struck me was New Zealand’s lushness. It felt full to bursting. In my own backyard, song thrushes devoured a nashi pear tree in December and January, and silvereyes and spotted doves thrashed around in the fig-tree in February.

  North of Auckland, at Ruakaka beach, a dune was roped off to protect a colony of New Zealand dotterels – their chicks had hatched, and scuttled across the sand like marbles. At other beaches and coves, SIPOs whizzed around my head whenever I unwittingly came too close to their young, and I watched a solitary godwit dunk its head under the tide to get at something with its long, sensitive bill.

  Out at the Mangere oxidation ponds one day with Gwen, we saw approximately 1000 wrybill – a fifth of the world’s entire population – plus 220 SIPOs, eleven little black shags, seven Caspian terns, and uncounted roosts of godwits. Two park rangers came by with good news. They had captured another two stoats, both females, their pained mouths opened to reveal the little sharp teeth that have annihilated New Zealand’s bird populations for over a century. It was satisfying to look at the four deep grooves lodged in their back by the stoat trap, which is known as the George Foreman – when the trap comes down, it looks as though the stoats have been gri
lled.

  Good. Birds, everywhere; that’s what’s wanted. It had been a year since the night of the black-backed gull flying past Emily’s downtown balcony, a year since I first became aware of another kind of New Zealand – these bird islands, this birdland. It was full to bursting with a life I had never known about.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To Graham Turbott, Geoff Moon, Gwenda Pulham, Adrian Riegen, Brian Gill, Sav Saville, and John Simmons of the Ornithological Society of New Zealand (new members welcome) for their advice, patience and warmth. To the editor of The Sunday Star-Times, Cate Brett, for her indulgence, and to readers who responded to my bird columns in Sunday magazine. To John Naughton and Hilary Pennington at the Wolfson College Press Fellowship in Cambridge University for their support, and to Jaquelina Jimena, Massimo Ragnedda, Ital De-Valera Botchway, Sandrine Baume, Matt Edmonds, Luis Poulter, head porter David Luhrs and the kitchen staff at Wolfson College, where their friendship meant a lot during the writing of much of this book. To writers Neil Cross, Charlotte Grimshaw and Paula Morris for their literary encouragement. Above all, literally, to the swirling presence of birds, especially the white-faced heron.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  The 1826 Journal of John James Audobon: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967

  99 New Zealand Birds, Don Hadden: Caxton Press, 1990

  The Animals of New Zealand, Captain F.W. Hutton and James Drummond: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1923

  The Big Year, Mark Obmascik: Doubleday, 2004

  A Biology of Birds, Barrie Heather: Ornithological Society of New Zealand, 1966

  Bird Islands of New Zealand, Robert Wilson: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1959

  Bird Secrets, Major G.A. Buddle: Reed, 1951

  Bird Watching and Bird Behaviour, Julian Huxley: Dobson, 1930

  Birders: Tales of a Tribe, Mark Cocker: Viking, 2002

  The Birds Around Us, R.H.D. Stidolph: Hedley’s Bookshop Ltd, 1971

  Birds in New Zealand, C.J.R. Robertson: Reed, 1974

  Birds of New Zealand Locality Guide, Stuart Chambers: Arun Books, 2000

  Birds of New Zealand, Alfred M. Bailey: Denver Museum of Natural History, 1955

  Birds of the Water, Wood and Waste, Herbert Guthrie-Smith: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1927

  A Book of Birds and Beasts, Dorothy Margaret Stuart: Methuen, 1957

  Buller’s Birds of New Zealand, ed. E.G. Turbott: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1967

  Extinct Birds of New Zealand, Alan Tennyson and Paul Martinson: Te Papa Press, 2006

  Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand, Barrie Heather and Hugh Robertson: Oxford University Press, 1997; revised edition: Penguin, 2005

  A Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand, R.A. Falla, R.B. Sibson and E.G. Turbott: Collins, 1966

  Focus on New Zealand Birds, Geoff Moon: Cameo Press, 1957

  In Search of Birds in New Zealand, Ross McKenzie: Reed, 1972

  A History of the Birds of New Zealand, Sir Walter Buller: Cambridge University library copy, 1888

  The Life Histories of New Zealand Birds, Edgar Stead: Search Publishing, 1932

  The Life of the Robin, David Lack: Pelican, 1953

  More New Zealand Bird Portraits, M.F. Soper: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1965

  Native Birds in New Zealand, Charles Masefield: Reed, 1948

  New Zealand Bird Life, E.G. Turbott: Reed, 1947

  New Zealand Birds and How to Identify Them, Pérrine Moncrieff: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1923

  New Zealand Birds in Focus, Geoff Moon: Reed, 2005

  New Zealand Birds, W.R.B. Oliver: Fine Arts, 1930

  New Zealand Land of Birds, Geoff Moon: New Holland, 2001

  Notornis, Volumes 1–52, 1940–2006

  Paintings of the Birds of New Zealand, J.G. Keulemans: Random House, 2006

  Pyramid Valley, Roger Duff: Pegasus Press, 1952

  RSPB Birds of Britain and Europe, Rob Hume: Dorling Kindersley, 2002

  The Shell Bird Book, James Fisher: Ebury Press, 1966

  This Birding Life, Stephen Moss: Aurum Press, 2006

  The Travelling Naturalist Around New Zealand, Brian Parkinson: Century Hutchinson, 1989

  THE PHOTOGRAPHS

  One of the heroes of this book is Major Geoffrey Buddle. Awarded the Distinguished Service Order, the Military Cross and the White Eagle of Serbia for his bravery in World War I, he was gassed in France and not expected to live when he returned to New Zealand. But he survived, and travelled with his friends Edgar Stead and Major Rodney Wilson to study birds in some of the most remote corners of New Zealand. Buddle died in 1951, the year that A.H. & A.W. Reed published his exquisite book of photography, Bird Secrets. Many of the photographs reproduced in this book come from that classic work. The other photographs are also held in the Buddle Collection at Auckland Museum. Faded, bewitching, timeless, the photographs reveal his lifelong love of birds. The captions are as he wrote them.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  STEVE BRAUNIAS is a senior writer and columnist with The Sunday Star-Times, and winner of numerous national journalism awards. Fool’s Paradise, his book of selected columns, won Best First Book of Non-Fiction at the 2002 Montana Book Awards. He has been the editor of Capital Times, feature writer at Metro, deputy editor at the Listener, and is a contributing writer to TV One’s Eating Media Lunch and The Unauthorised History of New Zealand.

  Red-billed Gull following the yacht off the North Cape, 6.1.47

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